Sweet Little Midsomer Murder
by marymagdalena
Summary: Inspector Barnaby's holiday isn't even off to a start before it is interrupted by the murder of an aspiring actress who was living in a cottage adjacent to an artists' commune. The crime was accompanied by an act of vandalism which defaced paintings of the actress. The key to her death seems to lie in the slashed paintings.


**Sweet Little Midsomer Murder**

 _ **Author's Note: This is a co-authored story. I do not own Midsomer Murders. The characters of Inspector Tom Barnaby, Detective Sergeant Ben Jones and Joyce Barnaby are characters from the Midsomer Murders series, created by Caroline Graham. The other main characters and the plot of the story were created for a novel which was never published; the author of the novel was my late mother, whose pen name was Steffi Laszlo. While she was alive, Steffi gave me verbal permission to adapt her story whenever I stumbled across an appropriate venue. She was a great aficionado of "Midsomer Murders" and, having also become a devotee of the series, I have therefore updated/adapted/reworked the story as a Midsomer Murder. The original title of the unpublished novel was "Sweet Little Mona."-marymagdalena  
**_

 **ONE**

"An art and craft fair is not my idea of a holiday," grumbled Inspector Tom Barnaby to his wife, Joyce, knowing full well that his complaint was falling on deaf ears.

"You had your chance to get out of it," replied Joyce smugly as she put away the last of the coffee cups. "After all, you DID promise—and one thing to do as a family each day is really not too much to ask. Unless you're tired of being in your wife's company, of course."

"Never that," Barnaby responded in mock horror. Well, he had promised, after all. He would get up and go to church with Joyce or he would go to the fair, he'd said. The pillow had won the battle with the alarm clock this morning, so the spring art and craft fair it would be.

"Are you wishing you were out inspecting something?" inquired Joyce later, as they made their way through the pastoral outskirts of Midsomer.

"I am inspecting something," replied Barnaby, squinting into the distance. "Look."

 **TWO**

"I was so looking forward to this," lamented Joyce as she looked toward the property adjoining the rambling old farmhouse at the edge of town, a property which was rescued from developers some time ago. Around the Barnabys were the remnants of what would have been the artistic event: pavilions, easels, oil paintings, tables of handcrafted jewellery. All being taken down, folded, packed up and boxed (respectively).

"It's only postponed," Barnaby replied automatically, surveying the crowd of artists, crafters and potential customers as they began wandering away, mostly in small groups.

"Along with your holiday, sir," said the voice of Detective Sergeant Ben Jones at his ear.

"Oh NO," said Joyce.

"I'm afraid so. It's one of the young girls who was living there." Jones gestured up to the farmhouse-turned-artist's-commune. "The other residents are gathered on the porch. I took the liberty of asking them to wait. I knew you would want—"

"Yes, of course," Barnaby said over his shoulder, already walking toward the tumbledown but lovingly repaired old verandah.

"I'm going down into the village. I think I'll stop in the bookstore," announced Joyce to no one in particular. She, too, was already walking off.

 **THREE**

"She wasn't an artist. She was an ACTRESS," explained the youngish landlady tiredly. She and Tom Barnaby were in a kind of solarium that was converted into an office. Athena Constantinopolous had bought and saved the historic house with her parents' money, mostly to fulfil a promise that she'd made to her mother. But she clearly would prefer a different environment. Her plain cotton skirt and cardigan were unrelieved by any ornament, and her long, thick dark hair was scraped off her face with clippy combs. She held a pair of gardening gloves on her lap, because she had been tending the vegetable garden when the girl called Mona screamed from the little cottage behind the main house.

"An actress. You said she went by the name of Mona Blanche. What was her real name?" Barnaby enquired.

"A lot less French and a lot more Slavic. Her name was Blaska. Mona Blaska. She was going to drop the Blanche and start using her real name professionally. Professionally," Athena tried unsuccessfully to hold back a sneer. "Honestly. _Mona Blanche_. It sounds like something out of the silent films. Her agent talked her out of that. That's rich, from an agent named Guinevere."

"But we digress," said Barnaby patiently.

"Yes, we do. It's all a bit shocking, you see. Anyway, Mona was going to leave Midsomer. She had finally gotten a role with some independent filmmaker. It didn't sound as though it was anything substantial, but Mona thought it was her ticket out of here."

"Was anyone in the house particularly friendly with her?" asked Barnaby.

"You'd have to ask _them._ I don't get involved in their personal lives," replied Athena rather hastily. She flicked a gardening glove up and down ever so lightly. Gardens, solariums, plants, old houses. For all the ironclad invisible shields she put up around herself, Athena wants something to nurture, Barnaby thought.

"Were you friendly with her, Miss Constantinopolous?"

"Hardly. These people are my tenants. That is all. I live in London, with a couple of flatmates. Sensible women who have better things to do than to chase dreams and chase personal drama. I screened them carefully. During the week I work at the company my parents founded. And yes, I actually do _work_ there. But I have to come up here on weekends because if I don't do the work around here—" Barnaby was already edging toward the door of the little room.

"Yes, I'm sure, you do an admirable job, let me see how Jones is getting on," he murmured.

 **FOUR**

"You were her agent?" Jones was asking a long-nailed, rhinestone-bespectacled female with longish burgundy hair and an electric blue off-the-shoulder cotton top. The woman nodded absently, looking glassy-eyed. She picked up her glass of ice water, gestured as if to drink from it, then put it down again. They were sitting on old dining chairs on the porch.

"Is your name really Guinevere?" he asked gently, leaning to the side to draw her attention. She nodded again. "Welsh?" he asked with a forcedly casual tone.

"N-no, eccentric mother. Loved the Arthurian tales," Guinevere replied automatically. She dragged her glassy gaze to Jones' direction. "I'm sorry. It's just so awfully shocking. She was a friend, and a good prospect, and…." She looked down at his clipboard, then spelt her name out slowly. She added, as if an afterthought, "Leigh." She spelt that as well. "I had finally gotten an offer for Mona. A decently-paying role that could lead to other things. It wasn't my first pick for her, and she knew that. I had to work around her limitations." They both looked inadvertently at the glamour shot of Mona that Guinevere had pulled from her briefcase. The photograph depicted a short, bosomy twenty-three-year old brunette with enormous eyes. Mona would never be twenty-four. She hadn't survived the stabbing assault that had elicited her scream a few minutes after noon.

"She had charm and a better presence onstage or before the camera than one would expect. But she didn't have-depth. I had a couple of mainstream, fairly influential filmmakers somewhat interested in her. Not for starring roles, mind you, but for-secondary , tertiary romantic interest type of things. One of them made her a bona fide contract offer. But Mona went with this fly-by-night independent film group for some reason. The influence of living in a community like this, I suppose."

"Does that mean that your commission was less than you would have gotten if she had taken up with the mainstream offers?"

"I didn't get any commission at all for this. She found this indie group herself, online. Trying out her own wings, I suppose. Do I need to talk anymore? I'm terribly tired all of a sudden. I'd like to get back to London. I was only here to talk sense into Mona, and that's moot now."

"Just tell me if there's anyone else you think I should be talking to," Jones replied somewhat brusquely.

"Well, you might try the artist she was posing for. That's what brought her to this house in the first place. Or Mona's friend Vinnie. Mona told Vinnie everything, all the time. Of course there's that— _landlady,"_ she finished dismissively. "But it looks as though your partner there had already had a word with her." She indicated the front door, which opened as Barnaby came out.

 **FIVE**

"So there seem to be two men living here who are involved in this girl's life. The artist she was posing for, and this Vinnie person. I think we should both chat with them. What was the name of that artist ?" asked Barnaby. The two inspectors were comparing notes whilst leaning on the carefully repaired old fence, watching the last of the caravans pulling away from the forlorn fair site.

"Some Italian name," said Jones absently, tearing his eyes away from the glam photo of Mona Blanche/Blaska long enough to look at his notepad.

"Oh, thanks for that, Jones. "

"Carelli. Giovanni Carelli." Jones grinned sheepishly as he always did when he elicited Barnaby's mild sarcasm.

"Right. Miss Constantin—oh, her surname's far too long. The landlady. She said he has the attic studio upstairs."

A voice interrupted their discourse. "Gentlemen. Please. Come in and have a—I'm sorry, you're on duty. Come in and have a cup of coffee." The woman who had come out of the house was on the older side of middle age, and had obviously been extremely pretty in her youth. She extended a hand that was decorated with a surprisingly expensive-looking engraved bangle bracelet. "I'm Miss Maslin. I rent the whole third floor. Come on up. Mind you don't lean on the bannister too hard." With a click of her high-ish heel, Miss Maslin, who had by now engineered the two men through the front door, turned and headed up the central staircase. After a bit of puffing and panting and being confronted in the stairwell by sketches, paintings and multimedia pieces of various levels of ability, Jones and Barnaby found themselves in a tasteful art-deco drawing room of sorts.

"You rent the whole—third floor, Miss Maslin?" Barnaby sank with relief into a soft chair that was indicated by their hostess. Jones, younger and less winded, sat on the edge of a little settee.

"Yes. I'm not an artist, not a visual artist at any rate," Miss Maslin called from a little walk-in kitchen across a narrow hall. "I was a dancer. Musicals. The London stage. I lived in New York for awhile and did some Broadway touring companies. I wanted to retire somewhere artistic, and I found this place through my—my—former—employer." She had produced a coffee tray and was placing it in front of them.

"You know this Giovanni Carelli very well, Miss Maslin?" asked Barnaby as he cautiously lifted a very fragile-looking cup to his lips.

There was a hesitation. "Yes," she said softly. She caught Jones' raised eyebrows and said, half-sharply and half-humourously, "You young ones are always such romantics. Yes, I do admire Giovan, I admire him deeply. But not amorously. I had more than enough of that sort of thing before I arrived here."

"From your—former employer?" Barnaby asked, his voice reflecting her own intonations.

"Mr. Hedley, yes. I retired from the stage before I planned to. He was a backer, an angel they call it, for one of the productions I did in New York. He was-very kind, in his own way, and very financially secure. Unfortunately, he was also very married and planned to stay that way. But he wanted me to be—always available." She walked over to the window. The light showed hair that had been coppery red; she had touched it up for awhile but had stopped and let the streaks of ivory have their way. They were an unusual shade and very striking. She hadn't used makeup to try to recapture a faded youth; in spite of the fact that her complexion was not quite healthy, there was a quiet dignity about her face. She was fine-boned if a bit sharp-featured. Her skirt and blouse were tasteful and expensive, but she had a clearly vintage-shoppe lavender lace shawl thrown carelessly about her shoulders. She almost shivered for a moment, then drew herself up and turned back to her guests.

"So no more of that. He's long gone. I like being by myself here, with good, intelligent company when I want it."

"Was Mona intelligent?" asked Barnaby.

Miss Maslin made a noise that would have, had she been less cultivated, been a snort. "Not on your life. Crafty. Cunning. Knew how to take advantage of people. Full of sob stories about her life in a coal mining town in America. But intelligent? No. Giovan, he thought the sun rose and set on her—until the last few months." She caught herself. "They weren't involved, not anymore. She was leaving."

"This Vinnie who was so close to Mona. Who is he?" asked Jones.

Miss Maslin lost her composure and her mouth opened wide. "Who on earth told you that? Oh, sorry, I know, you're the ones who are supposed to ask the questions. Close to her? Only in her mind." Regaining herself, she came and sat down on the settee across from Jones. "You must have gotten that from that Welshwoman, that agent. She's the only one who says Vinnie. I'm Vin. Lavinia Maslin."

"Oh!" Jones was the one to be caught off guard now. "But Guinevere—Miss Leigh said that Mona told Vinnie—Vin—you—everything."

Vin Maslin put her cup down calmly and returned his stare. "Yes, she probably did. But I never listened," she said simply.

 **SIX**

Giovanni Carelli's studio looked like a productive workplace. Although neither Tom Barnaby nor Ben Jones were art connoisseurs by any stretch of the imagination, they could both see that the man was talented. He looked the part, too: longish salt-and-pepper hair and an almost Edwardian moustache, an old pirate-type shirt and paint-speckled black jeans. His eyes looked sunken in. Barnaby and Jones spent a few moments looking at Carelli's works: some framed, some on the easel, some leaning in the corners. And some slashed.

Slashed?

"Almost all the ones of Mona," Carelli said gruffly. He was drinking from a jam jar, and it obviously wasn't coffee.

"Did you—?" Barnaby asked softly.

"Me? I think not. I might have had a falling out with sweet little Mona, but that would be no reason to destroy art." The slightest trace of bitterness had crept into his voice; clearly Mona may have been little, but not, in Carelli's book, sweet. "I only just came up here and found these, when your boys said we could come back into the house. I came up to wait—I knew you lot would be here." He coughed and turned away. Another man would have wanted the police to see emotion on his face at a time like this; Carelli was plainly choosing pride over caution. "Sweet little Mona," he said again. His accent was that of a native Italian who had lived in England for some time. He did not quite spit the words, but only just.

"One is missing," he said abruptly.

"One painting?" All of Carelli's works, except for preliminary sketches, were painting: some oil, some water, some pastel.

"Yes. It's one of the nudes. The nudes were the ones that were slashed. The others, the vandal left alone. It must have been jealousy. But she never went out, and besides me there was no one—" He coughed.

"Signor Carelli, where were you this morning? No one seems to have seen you at the fair."

"I was here. I was going to bring a few paintings down later to sell, although people usually buy craft items more than paintings at a fair like that. I was going to finish this one of Mona today." He indicated a sombre painting of a dark-haired, gamine waif of a girl with her head in her arms, sitting on the bottom step of a rickety wooden front porch. She was in a nondescript cotton dress, and there were dark hills in the background. "The coal mining town that she described," Carelli said. "It probably looks more like Wales, because that's what I see in my mind when I think of coal mining. But Mona came from America. West Virginia."

"The sob stories," Barnaby said aside to Jones.

Carelli's hearing was as sharp as his artist's eye. "Yes. Her stepfather was always calling her a whore because she wanted to be in films. She would become furious, wild, enraged if anyone used that word to her."

"Did you use that word to her?" Jones enquired.

"Yes," Carelli said quietly. "Yes, I did. Toward the end. I told her she took advantage of me. We were supposed to be married." He laughed bitterly. "That ended as soon as she decided to accept this indie film contract. This abstract interpretation of the life of Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc! Mona!" He chugged down his jar of spirits. "Any further questions?"

"Stay in Midsomer," Barnaby said.

"Where the hell else would I go?"

 **SEVEN**

"Let's see. Besides the few crafters who lived downstairs and were at the fair, no one has a decent alibi. I know I'm stating the obvious," observed Jones at the pub later.

"You're forgiven. Carelli was in his studio, he says. No alibi there. Athena Constan—the landlady was in the garden. No one was there to see her. Miss Lavinia Maslin was somewhere at the fair. People saw her going in and out, but not around noon when Mona Blaska screamed from the cottage." Mona Blaska's bedroom in the cottage-the cottage rental for which Mona had paid by doing cleaning work for Athena Constantinopolous-had been a grisly sight. The girl had been brutally attacked with a large kitchen knife, the sort that is part and parcel of most kitchen cutlery. It had been an amateurish job. Her face and neck were unharmed, though, as though the person hadn't wanted to mar her beauty. A jealous lover? A would-be lover? Or simply someone with an appreciation of art? Or, perhaps, someone who hadn't had time to finish the job?

"Guinevere Leigh," Barnaby continued, "was probably the last person seen with her. Trying to talk her into accepting what was obviously a better film offer-better for Guinevere's pocket, too, in terms of commission—and getting nowhere. She said she was on her way out of the front garden at noon, and Mona had gone to the cottage to get ready to pack. It didn't seem as though there was much packing going on."

"Here we are." An extremely youthful barmaid put sandwiches and chips down in front of them. She was blonde and perky—quite the opposite of Mona Blaska.

"Tell me something," said Barnaby with sudden inspiration. "No, not you, Jones. You Miss—"

"Mariette," said the girl, intrigued.

"Mariette. If you were an actress—"

"Oh!" Mariette giggled.

"Why would you turn down a part with an established studio to do a little independent film?"

"Was the, um, established studio offer a trashy part or a quality part?"

"Probably the former," said Barnaby.

"And the Indie film?"

"An alternative interpretation of the story of Joan of Arc," Barnaby replied, looking toward Jones.

"Would I by any chance be Joan of Arc in that one?"

"The very one," Barnaby said.

"You just answered your own question, didn't you?"

"Youth," lamented Barnaby.

"Who supported Mona Blaska?" asked Barnaby as the two men headed out of the pub. "I know she paid for her room by cleaning, but she certainly had a lot of…"

"Stuff," Jones finished Barnaby's sentence for him.

"The fragrances, body glitter, temporary tattoos, paste-on jewels. She was…"

"Young," said Jones. "Youthful. I expect it may have been Carelli paying her way, unless there was someone else."

"You don't suppose this Maslin woman could have had feelings for her?"

"I suppose anything is possible," Jones said noncommittally. "I suppose even that landlady—"

"Athena Constan—her. You know, she may have been fed up with giving Mona that whole cottage worth of space in exchange for cleaning only. They may have quarrelled. That could have been the reason Mona was leaving. She might not really have had to leave Midsomer in order to make the film," Barnaby reasoned.

"Carelli, of course, had the love interest. She was leaving him," Jones pointed out.

"He had two motives, actually. She was his best model. And he wasn't done with his paintings of her," Barnaby finished working his thought out loud.

"Still, we don't have enough evidence to make an arrest on anyone," Jones sighed. "Were you thinking of wrapping things up for the night?"

"Joyce is going to remind me that this was supposed to be my holiday," Barnaby said quietly, closing his eyes for a moment. "I'm going to have to make this up to her. Jones—"

"What is it, sir?"

"Who was making this independent film?"

 **EIGHT**

"I TOLD you, she found it online," said Guinevere loudly into the phone. The noise of fax machines, chatter and ringing telephones pervaded the background.

"Do you know the web address?" Jones felt himself shouting into his mobile, his voice raised to match hers, even though he and Barnaby were standing in the lane leading up to the artists' residence and the place was basically devoid of noise.

"No, I don't. I'm sorry. It wasn't my contact. "

"I should have just looked it up in the first place," said Jones.

"No, wait. You wouldn't know where to look. Let me call you back."

"Oh! Thanks."

"You're ever so welcome," replied Guinevere dryly.

"I'm glad you're a man who keeps his mind on the job," observed Barnaby as Jones clicked the mobile shut..

"I suppose I'm being transparent again," sighed Jones.

 **NINE**

"Who keeps an eye on things when Miss Constantin _OPOULOUS_ is away?" Barnaby asked a small group of crafters who were working side-by-side in the common room.

"I suppose we look after one another," said an earnest, rather effiminate young man who was working at a kind of modified loom. The comment earned a stifled sneer from a potter who was painting clay with a deliberately haunted look.

"We manage for ourselves down here," said the potter. "Mona and the Italian, they were always fighting, especially lately. The old girl's not too bad."

"She quotes all the suicidal female poets when she gets drunk," observed a gypsyish girl who was patching some gauze.

"Giovanni never hit Mona, though," said the first young man. "He wasn't like that."

"Go on. Stabbed her to death, didn't he?" snapped the potter. "If it wasn't him, then who was it? It wasn't any of us. We were all together at the fair. Miss Athena's not going to get herself into any trouble and lose the house. As for the old girl upstairs, she probably only knows how to slice a cake."

"Vin's not so old. She sets out a good tea," said a Jamaican girl with beautiful thick dredlocks who was working on a pair of shell earrings. "Real finesse."

One fingerprint. If only the killer had left one fingerprint, thought Barnaby. "What about her agent? Guinevere?"

"Guinevere was done with her. Dooooone," said the earring crafter in her velvety lilt. "I was surprised she came back today."

"Speaking of which," said Jones as he came into the room from the front garden, indicating his mobile.

"Speaking of whom," corrected the potter.

 **TEN**

"A CHRISTIAN group?" Barnaby asked incredulously. He had signalled Jones to come around the side of the house to share the results of Guinevere's call.

"Not Christian Christians. Not Anglican or Nonconformist or Methodist or anything. Some offbeat sect."

"I don't even know what to say to that," said Barnaby.

"Anyway, they do these independent films on people in religious history. From the Bible, but others, too. People who made religious history."

"Like Joan of Arc."

"Like Joan of Arc."

"Are they-well-"

"Crazy? Not really. They seem pretty well-informed and well-read overall," said Jones. "But kind of straitlaced, do you know what I mean?"

"Straitlaced how?"

"They skirt around—well, you know. Sex."

"Kind of hard to tell Biblical and religious history without mentioning sex, isn't it?" observed Barnaby. "Unless one is writing for children."

"No, they don't write for children. They're just—straitlaced."

"What is the name of this production company?"

"Cloud of Witnesses."

"Ah, from the letters of Saint Paul. Hang on a minute, Jones—"

"Yes?"

"How would they feel about their leading lady—"

"Yes?"

"Having posed in the nude?"

"I don't think they would care for that at all."

"Well," said Barnaby. "Well."

 **ELEVEN**

"Inspector." The voice behind him had a faint Greek accent. Had Midsomer ever had so many Mediterranean overtones?

"Miss Constantinopolous." He turned from the gate to the artists' house, politely holding it open for Athena. She looked more put-together today, in jeans and a light silvery windcheater. "I didn't expect to see you during the week."

"I'm going to work online from here for awhile. I don't like all this melodrama taking place on my property without my being here." She walked ahead of him through the gate and toward the house.

"Miss Constantinopolous, this is a little more than melodrama. This is a murder investigation. I'm sorry for the inconvenience..."

"There's no need for sarcasm. I appreciate the gravity of the situation. I confess I don't like my routine upset, but that can't be helped." She stopped at the front door. "Did you want to talk to me for any reason?"

"I'd like to look around for the missing painting. Mr. Carelli says that the painting is..." he looked at the description he'd written. "An oil painting of Mona Blaska, nude, sleeping on a Persian rug, with a skull in her hand. A rather large, rectangular painting." He raised his eyebrows. "Can you be of any help with that?"

"I'm sorry, no."

"We think that perhaps Mona herself may have taken the painting and hidden it. Was there anyplace on the property that she used to go to be by herself?"

"I really would have no way of knowing that. I wasn't her confidante."

Barnaby sighed. He was at an impasse. No mail, e-mail or telephone records had been of any help. No one in the house seemed to have a complete set of kitchen cutlery, so it was difficult to say who might own a knife that had gone missing. Hopefully Jones was having some luck combing the property. Missing painting, missing knife, any evidence at all. Something. "Did anyone here have a—romantic interest in Mona Blaska? Other than Giovanni Carelli? Any of the men here? The women?"

"Not to my knowledge, no. I mean, she was pretty; everyone saw she was pretty." Barnaby looked for some trace of jealousy in Athena's face or voice, but both were matter-of-fact. "She didn't spend time with the crafters. They have their own little microcosm. And she didn't go down to the village except on errands. She cleaned, she read play scripts, she posed for Carelli, she—spent time with Carelli. She followed Vin Maslin around, looking for a mother figure I suppose. That was about all."

"Was anyone interested in Giovanni Carelli?"

The face looked a little less matter-of-fact for a nanosecond. "I don't think so. He and Vin are very good friends. I don't think they were ever—I suppose I could be wrong. I'll just say—I don't think they were more than friends. Not to my knowledge."

"Sir! Oh, good morning, Miss Constantinopolous. Sir—"

"Jones?"

"If you'd come look outside the cottage with me for a second."

"The place is going to be crawling with coppers in a few minutes, isn't it?" asked Athena flatly.

"Yes, ma'am," said Jones.

 **TWELVE**

"How did the entire team miss the murder weapon the first time around?" Barnaby's frustration was making him wish he had taken his holiday as far abroad as possible, taken Joyce to the Orient, anything. "It was in a hollow tree, for heaven's sake. It's almost cliche'."

"Well, to be fair, it was in there fairly deep. It had to have been done in a hurry, too. The girl had screamed loudly enough for everyone to come running, after all. Well, we have it now..."

"Yes, hope dawns on the horizon. Let's hope for fingerprints. I think we should look around one more time before we go back to the station."

"The painting? But one would think the weapon is more-"

"What have we heard back from the girl's family?" Barnaby interrupted.

"Nothing as of yet. They had to trace them online. There weren't any other contacts for her, either."

"And the Cloud of Witnesses?"

"They're someplace in the Fens. It's only about four people. All their alibis checked out, unless...But we have the murder weapon! This should all be—"

"I want to have the whole story, Jones. This is too convoluted for basic answers."

The mobile rang. "I don't think we'll have time for that look-around," Barnaby said.

 **THIRTEEN**

"Well, I'm not surprised there were no fingerprints on the knife itself," Barnaby mused as they drove down the lane toward the old house yet again. "I expected that. Artists always have rags and cloths and whatnot."

"And I'm not surprised the oilcloth found with it was Carelli's," Jones declared. "So much for a convoluted story."

"It's not over until the proverbial fat lady proverbially sings," was Barnaby's response. "Nonetheless, it's time."

They climbed out of the car and approached the house with that grim, almost-poker-faced non-expression associated with making an arrest.

"Coppers again." That was the potter's voice. He was experimenting with sculpture in the front garden. "And me with a blade in my hand."

"They walked right past us," said the jewellery crafter, who was sitting on a white wrought-iron bench working on a mediaeval-looking choker.

"Are you back for your look-around?" That was Athena on the porch, who had undoubtedly seen them from the window of her solarium office. She was obviously good at listening, as well.

"No. We're going to need to come upstairs." Athena made a face and stepped aside, looking torn between going back to her work and wanting to see what was going on in her house. She stayed on the porch, watching.

That staircase again, thought Barnaby. They should be able to get the climb overwith, get to the attic unhindered—but there was that blasted third floor. Sure enough. "Gentlemen." Vin stood in her doorway. she was wearing what had once been an exquisite satin robe, one that was still well-kept, but with slightly faded and unravelling lace at the top. She held a cut-crystal wineglass. Edith Piaf singing "La Vie en Rose" sounded in the background. It didn't sound as though it was playing on a CD, but on a gramophone. Vin had been—not exactly weeping, but grieving something, her eyes just short of brimming over. Barnaby was not an unsympathetic man, but he was tired and irritable and had had enough of rambling old houses with their staircases for one week. Will people ever let police get on with their business? he sometimes wanted to shout.

"Miss Maslin," he acknowledged. They heard her satin-slippered feet behind them as they headed up the stairs.

"Can I help—why are you—don't you want to come in and talk to—"

"Our business is not with you, Miss Maslin." Barnaby said more than a little brusquely. Jones raised his hand to knock sharply on the door, but it opened first. If Vin had been tippling at the wineglass this morning, Carelli was a few tipples ahead of her. He looked at the two men with an expression that was a startling combination of amusement and resentment. He gestured for them to follow him into the studio. The hand he gestured with held a paintbrush; the other, the glass jar.

"I won't pretend to be surprised," he said. "Go on, caution me."

There were no cameras, no microphones, no Fleet Street as they reached the front door. But there was definitely an audience. The group of crafters stood together closely in the garden, their tasks set aside, a spectrum of facial expressions set not on the law enforcers, but on Carelli. Athena had come out of her solarium office, a sheaf of fax papers in her hand, as rigid as a statue of her namesake goddess. Behind Barnaby, Jones and Carelli were soft but rapid footsteps, Vin's no doubt. Those footsteps ended abruptly, accompanied by a wail that was almost as soft and a thump that was a bit less so, the sound of someone sitting suddenly in despair. Jones turned his head back for a moment, and then they were through the garden and out of the gate.

 **FOURTEEN**

"I will start my holiday next week. We're finishing this case out now. We'll have just as much time and we'll do more than one thing as a family every day, I promise. I will absolutely make it up to you, of course." Barnaby flicked off his mobile and rolled his eyes toward Jones. "My lady wife does not sound too terribly abandoned. She's at tea with her book club. It seems we're through here for the day. Shall we have a pint? I could do with one."

"I could have done with one about two hours ago," responded Jones rather too cheerily. He reached for his coat. "I suppose Carelli will have to paint prison scenes from now on," he observed. "Remind me never to fall in love that hard."

"You're far too sensible," laughed Barnaby. The air was chillier than it had been this morning, chillier than it had been this season. The sun had never come all the way out that day. Spring had slipped into some distant solitary place. "I hope we've seen the last of that house," Barnaby added, as though the thought and the chill were somehow intertwined.

"I thought there for a moment we weren't going to get out of there as quickly as we'd hoped," Jones said offhandedly. "I wouldn't mind crossing paths with that Guinevere again, although those fake diamonds were a little much."

"You mean the rhinestones?" Barnaby chuckled, then enquired, "Why wouldn't we get out of there?"

"Oh, that Vinnie or Vin or whatever she's called. She came down the stairs behind us dragging some sort of old blanket. Anyroad, she tripped on it a little as she was trailing after us. She wasn't hurt, though, not physically anyway. I looked back to see."

"Old blanket."

"Seemed kind of ratty for her. I mean, her clothes were old but they were sort of vintage, you know? Oh, well, I suppose there's no telling—"

"Damn and blast."

"What?"

"We'll have to hold off on the pint. We haven't seen the last of that house after all."

 **FIFTEEN**

"Bloody coppers again." The potter.

"Where's Miss Maslin?" asked Barnaby, ignoring the comment.

"Haven't seen her."

"Very well." Barnaby turned his back on the young man and gestured to Jones. "Let's get inside... Oh, snap out of it, Ben. You missed one observation. Take heart. You won't miss them so easily when you get to my rank."

"Again?" That was from Athena, not in her solarium office this time but seated on one of the rickety porch chairs. Not working, but for once just sitting.

"We're sorry, ma'am." They headed past her and back up the stairs, Barnaby in the lead.

"Open up." Barnaby was pounding the door, but it was Jones' voice.

"Don't." Another voice, that of Vin Maslin, came from above them; it sounded dreamy and faraway. She was framed in the doorway again, this time to Carelli's attic studio. When she stepped out on the landing, she was holding the blanket that Jones had described. It was a faded green, not a woman's blanket at all, and very threadbare. Vin had shed the satin robe in favour of a violet and gold cocktail frock, unfitting for the time of day or the decade. Waiting. "I'm here," she added superfluously.

"You were returning the blanket you were using as a cover for the painting. Did you return the painting too?" Barnaby's voice was almost gentle.

"Yes. I know you'll take it as evidence. But I hope you'll make sure that it gets properly exhibited. Afterward." She flung the door open dramatically and the two detectives followed her into Carelli's studio. It was the same as they had left it except for the addition of a large canvas—an oil painting of a sleeping girl with masses of tumbling hair across her bare shoulders. Even in sleep her expression was troubled. One hand was flung across the ornate rug beneath her; the other clutched a human skull the way a child would clutch a toy in its sleep. The piece was beautifully executed. And painful.

"Mona was going to destroy that," Vin whispered. "Can you imagine?"

"The way she destroyed the others," said Barnaby.

"With Carelli's knife." That was Jones.

"She was in a rage. An absolute rage. The little brat. She expected Giovan to keep his pieces out of exhibit until her ridiculous film was released! Can you imagine? She told me herself. I usually just—how would you put it, tuned her out—but that got my attention. I was stunned." Vin's voice was raised now, and she was suddenly fully alert. "Giovan told me he'd had an offer to exhibit in London. His series of Mona was going to be the set of pieces de resistance. And she wanted him to give that up. He was furious. She'd only just told him that she wasn't going to marry him after all. He called her a whore and she tried to attack him, physically. No breeding! She should have stayed on her own side of the pond, in her coal mining town."

"Sweet little Mona," murmured Barnaby. "Indeed."

"Sweet little destruction machine, more like," sneered Vin. "When I saw her... She was defacing all that magnificent work so that it couldn't be exhibited. So that those ridiculous repressive so-called filmmakers wouldn't find out that their Joan of Arc posed in the nude. Giovan—was going to—repair the paintings. Try to repair them. But still—but still—"

"But no one can repair Mona," Jones told her flatly.

"No. No, they can't," Vin said with spirit. " _Sweet little Mona_ ," she snapped sharply. "When I found her up here with the knife, she was holding that oilcloth around it. Real ingénue, wasn't she? Innocence itself. Hardly that... Even in a rage, she remembered not to get her fingerprints on it. She was experienced in not taking responsibility for her actions." Vin looked directly at Barnaby. "It was her or the painting. I chose the painting to survive, and her to go. It wasn't difficult, you know. I may be older than she, and I may be—" That pallor again. Suddenly more pronounced. "I may not be at my healthiest, but I was a dancer. My muscles are declining, and declining fast, but they have been developed over a lifetime. I retired young but I never stopped dancing—not until very recently— even though I danced alone." She turned back to the painting. "I chose the painting to survive. I'm not sorry I made that choice."

"But what about your friend? You talk of taking responsibility. You let him go to gaol for you. You would have let him go to prison for life?"

"No. No, never that." She sat down suddenly, on a wooden stool, the stool of an artist's model. Her breath sounded shallower; she had been talking too long. "Oh, he had offered to take the blame—he was so deeply depressed—he told me it was his fault for his own bad decisions, that it didn't matter anymore. But I wasn't going to let that happen." Had she so recently overpowered and stabbed someone? That last burst of vigour, the kind you see in opera—she had used it for that, thought Barnaby.

"I almost told you earlier today. I tried to follow you out but—" She caught her breath. "When I tripped, I could have recovered myself and run after you—no, walked after you— but I stayed on the bottom step because I was afraid," she said simply. "I have surrounded myself with beauty all of my life. Prison? I don't think I could survive." She looked around the studio, drew in her breath and then let it out again. "I wrote this, and you would have gotten to read it later," she finally forced herself to say. She reached into the lame' bodice of her frock and pulled out a letter. Not typed on a computer, but handwritten. What else would one expect from a woman who played music on a gramophone? And awaited her end—whatever that would be—in a frock of lame' and chiffon that was probably older than she was?

Barnaby took the missive silently, read it without comment and handed it to Jones, who did likewise. As they were reading, Vin stared out of the window. Then she looked back. "I'm ready," she said.

On the way downstairs she asked, "Did I remember to turn the record off?"

She had. "La Vie en Rose" was nowhere to be heard.

 **SIXTEEN**

"You will accept our apologies?" Barnaby asked Carelli. With the situation behind him, Carelli had turned out to be an engaging and amiable man, with a remarkable spirit. He'd been no stranger to artistic angst before, and although he was still grieving, he wasn't going to remain shattered, Barnaby could tell. They were in front of the police station. The waning day was still grey, but the cloud was passing.

"I would have drawn the same conclusions as did you," he told them. "I could have told you the truth at any time. But why would I do that? I felt my life was over. One does, at such times. Ultimately—Vin did what she did for me, to save my work. And she is dying." The cloud slipped back again and hovered for a moment. "She was a wonderful friend. Never more than that, on either of our parts, but a wonderful friend. She used that last spurt of strength that comes right before the end for me—for my work. To save my work. I will truly miss her." He added quietly, "I will be back to visit her."

"Her note said that she only has a few months," Jones told him quietly. No one added that under the circumstances it was bound to be even less.

"She could have had the cancer treated, if she'd done it earlier on. Vin would never do that. It wouldn't have been—she wouldn't have been—Everything in life always had to be beautiful for Vin. I was the only one who knew she was ill."

"Well, I wish you the best," said Barnaby, extending his hand. "And I hope your exhibit is a success."

"I'm sure it will be, though I won't be there for the opening. I'll stay in Midsomer as long as Vin is still alive. Possibly longer," he said suddenly. They followed his eyes. "Here's my ride home."

"Gentlemen." The voice had a faint Greek accent. Giovanni slipped his arm through Athena's.

"Home," he repeated.


End file.
